FTX Had $8.9 Billion In Debt, Could That Be Why Binance Was Offering $1 To Acquire Business?

The collapse and bankruptcy of cryptocurrency company FTX continues to be one of the biggest stories of the month, year and potentially decade. A new report sheds light on just how bad the financials may have been for FTX prior to declaring bankruptcy.

What Happened: Once valued at $32 billion, FTX is now valued at next to nothing after declaring bankruptcy this week. The bankruptcy filing came after the company saw a pending acquisition for portions of its business by rival Binance fall through.

FTX had $900 million in liquid assets and $8.9 billion in liabilities before it filed for bankruptcy, according to a report from the Financial Times. Total assets listed in the report were $9.6 billion. One asset listed in the report was $2.2 billion of cryptocurrency Serum SRM/USD.

Among the investments on the balance sheet that were most liquid for FTX were shares of Robinhood Markets HOOD valued at $470 million, connected to ownership by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

Bankman-Fried was interested in selling the stake in Robinhood, and was soliciting dealmakers on the messaging app Signal, according to the report. The Robinhood shares are now owned by Emergent Fidelity, which was not listed in the bankruptcy filing.

The report said Bankman-Fried was willing to sell the Robinhood shares for around $9, compared to a market price of $10.47 at Friday’s close.

Another liquid asset reported was $200 million in cash held.

The bankruptcy filings showed the number of assets and liabilities ranging between $10 billion and $50 billion and a total of more than 100,000 creditors. Included in the $8.9 billion in liabilities is $5.1 billion in U.S. dollars.

Related Link: What's Going To Happen To All The Companies FTX Bought 

Why It’s Important: The high amount of liabilities might explain the offer price from Binance reported this week. Blockworks reported that Binance was offering $1 to acquire FTX before walking away. Binance was also rumored to have put a stipulation that it wanted to acquire the FTX US business from the company as well, which was not part of the original deal.

“No one is going to want to buy billions of dollars of messy debt for $1,” a source told Blockworks.

The acquisition announced Tuesday did not include FTX.us and only was for the FTX.com business with no terms of the deal disclosed.

“Our hope was to be able to support FTX’s customers to provide liquidity, but the issues are beyond our control or ability to help,” Binance said.

Bankruptcy lawyer John J Ray, who took over as CEO of FTX this week, said the company has “valuable assets” and the bankruptcy process would allow the company to “maximize recoveries for stakeholders.”

Once seen as a white knight for the crypto sector with investments in companies that needed funding or to be rescued, Bankman-Fried’s legacy is now under question. The FTX co-founder has seen his wealth drop from $16 billion to $0 according to valuation rankings by Bloomberg.

Crypto Price Action: Bitcoin BTC/USD is trading flat at $16,871.94 on Saturday and down 20.9% for the week. 

Ethereum ETH/USD is trading flat at $1,265.74 on Saturday and down 22.4% for the week.

The FTX Token FTT/USD is up 1% to $2.09 on Saturday and down 91.5% for the week. 

Read Next: Sam Bankman-Fried Claims To Be In Bahamas As Flight Tracker Show His Private Jet Flying To Argentina

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